Kory's Kindness
by Tobias Corvinus
Summary: Tali's a Pureblood Sith slave with bad manners and a feral disposition from years surviving in a spice mine. Kory's a weakling nobody who's one Trial away from a shocking expulsion. Shunned by the rest of the acolytes, neither one would be the other's first choice for an ally. But together they might form an edge sharp enough to cut their way up from the bottom of the class.
1. Chapter 1

Falling rock grit kept mucking up Corporal Doth's helmet visor. He took his left hand off the blaster's foregrip and smeared it away.

"More spice." A strand of crystal gold glittered along the rock wall in the cold thin air. The hair-thin strands seemed to shiver like cobwebs, but they were kriffing sharp to the touch.

Jadkins snorted to his left. _"Rather industrious of pirate-scum. Resurrect some old spice mine and hijack slaves to do the work for them."_

"They raided Imperial convoys. That's not industrious, that's terminal stupidity."Doth replied.

" _Well, I got the cure right here."_ Heyth tickled the underside of his scattergun's pump.

Up ahead, Sergeant Yaesin motioned for a halt and put his hand on his bucket, two fingers extended as he listened to orders from the _Persecutor's_ XO. Doth and the other two troopers took up overwatch positions while they waited.

They were all feeling a little blast-happy. Interdicting pirates wasn't the best use of crack Imperial troops but ever since the Treaty of Coruscant there wasn't much use _for_ crack Imperial troops. Until the war kicked back up, all anyone could do was drum their heels and try to avoid going mad. Vaping anything, even pirates, helped take that itch off.

Not that Corporal Doth was getting sloppy, no _sir._ The only thing worse than being relegated to pirate mop-up was getting mopped _by_ the undisciplined, sloppy, scum-spawn. So he checked his quadrant and kept his scopes _tight._

 _Still, would it be too much if they put up a better fight?_

Sporadic blaster fire could still be heard echoing in the mining complex's tunnels, but it seemed most of the pirate scum had been on the raiding ships when the _Persecutor_ dropped into the system. The survivors they'd followed back to this asteroid complex had only been reinforced by a skeleton crew. In retrospect, ten squads of troopers had probably been overkill, but the gunnery boys had already had their fun atomizing the rattling soup-can frigates and scavenged fighters.

It was still a pretty big rock and forty men wasn't enough to secure all this space. Scanners had mapped a deep maze of tunnels underneath the central facility and what pirates were still alive seemed to be fleeing there. That was fine by Doth. The squads had been planting charges and blowing through airlock doors as they went. As soon as they were boots-off, the _Persecutor_ would pop the dome with some turbolasers and give cold vacuum the honor of finishing off this pirate nest.

Sergeant Yaesin's helmet turned and he nodded at Doth and the rest of the team.

" _Thaunta squad's calling in. They've lost contact with Corporal Grembor. We're going to be playing nurse-droid."_

The fire-team moved quickly through the hand-carved tunnels, helmet lights bobbing and blasters steady. Other troopers passed them, shepherding long lines of gaunt-faced, rag-draped figures up the tunnels to the main airlocks.

The slaves had been a surprise, but they'd fetch a nice bonus from the Ministry of Labor when the _Persecutor_ rolled into port. Most of the slaves were proper Imperial stock and complying smartly, but there were sporadic reports of some of the more alien scum not getting the hint.

In Grembor's case, it looked it'd been something that a blaster bolt hadn't been able to put down.

The four troopers found their missing comrade in a dead end corner of a dug out spice shaft. Grembor's visor was cracked, hissing oxy out into the thin air. He appeared to be unconscious. Jadkins whistled. Judging by the wall behind him, it looked like something had picked him up and hurled him twenty meters.

" _Think we got a Wookie on the loose?"_ Jadkins asked. Nasty bastards, Wookies. Looked like something that should be lying on the floor, but Emperor help you if they got those long paws on you.

" _Saw some Houk running with the other pirates. Maybe one of them."_ Heyth contributed.

Corporal Doth bent down, Grembor's blaster was missing. He panned his helmet lights across the rocky floor. Not a whole lot of dust, the ground was hard-cooked igneous. Doth switched his visor mode to thermal.

" _Footprints, Sergeant."_

He pointed out the bright white glow-trails jutting out from the cold black rock. The impressions of five toes and a heel were still warm enough to be pretty clear. Doth frowned and cocked his helmet. If it'd been a Wookie or a Houk, it'd definitely been a _small_ one.

Sergeant Yaesin checked the power cell on his blaster rifle and nodded. _"Right then, Jadkins, Heyth, get Grembor stabilized for transport. Doth, you're on me."_

Doth one-handed his blaster, letting the sling stabilize his aim, and took up the scanner pack. The tunnels ahead were criss-crossed with all sorts of rare-earth minerals and crystalline echoes from the spice deposits.

The two troopers followed the footprints through the passageway and down a tunnel. They came out into a smaller chamber, really just an extra-wide tunnel. Glowlights hung on bare cables and shipping crates and other scrap piles had been tossed haphazardly in here.

The scanner pinged softly and Doth checked the readout. He message Yaesin over their internal comlinks. _"One humanoid ahead, Sergeant, behind that stack of durasteel."_

The stack in question had been shoved up at the far end, where the tunnel tapered into a sharp corner. The lights in that area were all burnt out and it looked like the crates had been gathering rock-dust for a decade. If it wasn't for the scanner and the thermal-vision, the troopers would've ignored it completely.

Yaesin's helmet bobbed an acknowledgement. His hand flashed forward and Doth took up his blaster in a two-handed grip. The sergeant motioned Doth right as he drifted left and that was apparently the point when their unseen quarry realized the jig was up.

The sharp triple _choom_ of a Blastech Z-12 lit up the dark tunnel. Scarlet lances struck all around them, vaporizing softer sediment and splintering harder igneous into shards that clattered off plastoid plates. Doth rolled for cover, snapping in behind a rocky mound thrusting up from the ground. He looked across the divide at Sergeant Yaesin, crouched behind a durasteel crate and shook his head.

 _This scum's got all the accuracy of a drunken Jawa_.

Then again, maybe it _was_ a drunk Jawa. Whoever was shooting didn't know enough to have the blaster extend past the cover. As the energy bolts left the barrel, the cast-off light was bouncing off the surrounding surface, effectively backlighting a small hunched figure wormed deep between some shipping crates.

Sergeant Yaesin's voice crackled over the blasterfire, calm and clipped with training and experience. _"Corporal, leapfrog right."_ Yaesin popped up to a hip-crouch and started laying down accurate bursts of fire. Rock walls splintered and chipped and the shooter ducked their head down.

Tactics of blindly rushing forward in a solid wave of chrome belonged in the recruitment holos. Real firefights were more Dejarik than smashball, pinning down the opponent with more accurate suppressive fire while your pieces moved into superior positions to flank them from the sides. Maybe less visually stunning, but the heart rate still kicked up just the same.

Corporal Doth took the opportunity to roll out of cover and zig for a stack of rusted durasteel barrels. He waited a two-count to aim and then he started peppering the rocky cover, cueing Yaesin to break from cover into a short sprint left.

Their attacker spat some blaster bolts at Yaesin as he sprinted but Doth was there to pepper the durasteel stacks. This time his bolts were tight enough to strike the edges around the narrow gap. Molten durasteel splattered and the shooter's small head ducked back down. He might've heard a hiss.

Doth moved up next and together they drew the noose tighter on the shooter. A perfect game of Dejarik. Doth dashed for the next piece of cover when Yaesin's covering fire abruptly stopped covering.

" _Sithspit! Stun! Stun!"_

 _What?_ Yaesin's sudden, panicked order snapped Doth out of his rhythm. He fumbled for a moment, dropping his aim to toggle settings and the shooter took that moment to try to break out of the noose they'd been drawing tight.

The figure leapt up from the ventilated shipping crates. He caught black hair and yellow eyes and a glinting slave collar and then red flashes as a trigger got jammed. The blaster rifle vibrated and jerked in the slave's undersized grip spitting fire crazily across the cramped tunnel. Two bolts pounded into Doth's armor, cracking plastoid and flinging him back. He hit the ground with a ronto-kick, momentarily stunned.

The little schutta's blaster clicked empty, it hurled past him as she turned and darted away. Then the adrenaline surge kicked into his roaring ears and Doth jerked his blaster up and squeezed the trigger. A fat blue cone leapt out and struck the shooter square in the back and she cartwheeled across the ground.

" _Corporal. Status."_ He could hear Sergeant Yaesin cursing a constant stream under his breath.

Doth's hands ran quickly up and down. Two deformed holes in his chest-plate where the plastoid had melted and pooled, but the armor had done its job. "Minor injuries. Just a a ronto kick, Sergeant."

Sergeant Yaesin clattered past him, boots rapping out a triple time on the hard ground. _"Jadkins! Heyth! No listen, forget that nerf-herder, I need that medical kit up here now!"_

Corporal Doth staggered to his feet and limped over to where the sergeant was crouched. Sergeant Yaesin rolled the slave's body over. She was ragged and dirty but what immediately leapt out was the blood-red skin. The short talon-like nails, and the bone-spur ridges around the eye-sockets. Thinner ridges bobbled over a stick-thin throat, clamped up tight under a battered durasteel collar.

Corporal Doth's jaws parted company for a good long while.

* * *

On the bridge of the _Persecutor_ Captain Yarrow's brow angled down in confusion from his trench-lined face. He descended into the crew-pit and bent over an ensign's shoulder, taking the headpiece from her and speaking directly into it.

"Sergeant, _what_ did you say?."

The transmission was garbled slightly by the layers of rock and space between them, but the breakdown in communication was rather more in the content of the message rather than the audio channel.

" _The slave's a Pureblood sir. A Sith Pureblood."_

Captain Yarrow looked at his XO. His XO stared back equally shocked. This was a dead-end rock in the middle of nowhere between two star systems. What the devil was a Pureblood doing all the way out here? _And a slave at that._

"Ah...understood Sergeant. Ah..." He cleared his throat, "Yes, very good. Bring the-" what, _prisoner, slave, lord? What's the proper protocol here?_ "-bring the individual on board. Be quick about it."

" _Yessir."_

Captain Yarrow returned the headset to the ensign and slowly stumbled back up to the command bridge and found himself wondering just what the hell he'd set his foot into this time.

* * *

Two hours later the asteroid was a vacuum tomb, the _Persecutor_ was in hyperspace, and the captain had been summoned to the infirmary for a medical emergency. When Yarrow stepped off the turbolift, he found four troopers checking their blasters outside the sealed infirmary doors and his chief medical officer on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

"Doctor Lynk, what the devil is going on?"

The gaunt-faced doctor carefully reached up and touched his bleeding scalp with a trembling grip."Captain I'm not going back in there." Dr. Lynk's voice rose higher and higher. "I barely dodged a flying vibro-scalpel and you should see what she did to the _droids_."

Yarrow pinched his nose and sighed. "What happened?"

Dr. Lynk exploded. "What happened is that you brought a _feral_ Sith into my bloody infirmary!"

"You were supposed to ascertain her condition and report on her status."

"Oh yes. _Report._ Yes, yes, very good sir." Dr. Lynk fisted his right hand in his left and straightened his back. It was trembling so badly his entire arm wobbled like an out-of-tune sprocket. "Female Sith Pureblood, age estimated somewhere between fourteen and eighteen years of development. The usual amount of trauma and chronic conditions from adverse slave conditions. Reduced bone mass, underdeveloped musculature, and a rather unfortunate body odor."

He paused to rapidly mop at the gash on his scalp before the blood ran into his eye. " _Mentally,_ she alternates between sociopathic angry, and this sort of narrow eyed gleam that makes you double-check the binders are still on."

"Binders?" Yarrow stared at him incredulously, "You put a Sith Pureblood in _binders_?"

"Blame the 2Vs! They were only following procedures for prisoner treatments!"

"Well did you try to explain?"

"Of course I bloody well tried to explain! She didn't believe me! I explained further which cued the aforementioned flying scalpel." Dr. Lynk folded his bloodied rag up and stuffed it in a pocket. "As far as I can tell that slave has a ten year old's grasp of Basic mixed with pigdin Twi'leki, Cathar, and _Gamorrean_ , all ways of saying _back off_ and _kill you_ and _kill you nasty_ and the things she said about my _mother_ -"

Captain Yarrow jerked his hand up, cutting off his doctor to seize upon a rather pressing contradiction. "But if she was in binders, how did she get her hand on a vibro-scalpel in the first place?"

"She's a Sith Pureblood, sir." Dr. Lynk's voice was deadpan calm but his eyes were darting between exasperated and _terrified_. "I expect in rather the same manner that made the _rest_ of my tools start vibrating like fever-wasps."

"Ah." Now it was Captain Yarrow's turn to swallow nervously. "I see."

He'd been lucky enough to have avoided entanglements with the Sith in his military career, but you heard the deck-talk and the stories in the officer's clubs after a few rounds of Corellian whiskey. Most of them revolved around the _displeasure_ Sith displayed when their tempers provoked.

He tugged his uniform and straightened his cap, "You two with me."

The two troopers looked rather displeased to have been singled out but they slipped into step obediently enough. Captain Yarrow paused outside the inner door and nodded at one of the troopers. "Those blasters _are_ set to stun."

There was a discrete finger twitch on control dials. "Yes sir." The trooper said blandly. Captain Yarrow frowned and his voice dropped another octave. "The trooper that fires without my explicit permission will be cleaning trash compactors for the rest of his career."

This time their affirmatives were rather more profound.

Captain Yarrow tugged at his uniform and fussed with his collar. He straightened his cap and finally found no further excuses. "Right then. Open it corporal, let's greet our guest."

The inside of the infirmary was dark. Lights spiz-spazzed weakly in their overhead socket, plunging the stark room into deep shadows. The rack of kolto tanks in one corner spilled ghostly blue light across the rest of the infirmary. Captain Yarrow's boots crunched on broken glass and he heard one of the troopers curse.

The broken hulk of a 2V droid slumped in a corner, one photoreceptor dangled out of its socket the other had been shattered into a fine metallic dust. Captain Yarrow leaned forward and peered into the gloom.

An Imperial captain does not display panic, nor is he ever surprised, especially not on the deck of his own ship. When a pair of cold yellow reptillian eyes flicked open, what Yarrow suffered was merely a temporary loss of balance and a quick redistribution of weight on his back foot.

A pair of yellow eyes stared back and Yarrow nearly jerked in shock.

The Pureblood was perched on one of the biobeds likes a hunched gargoyle. Bone spurs pinched her narrow face around her brow and eye-sockets and coarse black hair fell in a wild tangle down to her pointed chin. Thick sweaty trails slashed the mask of grime on her face to ribbons but the Sith's body didn't twitch a millimeter

Her eyes stared at him, narrow and unblinking as a viper-eel ready to strike from a bed of seaweed. Her mouth tightened but she didn't speak.

Captain Yarrow studied her, then bowed his head. "My lord. My most humble apologies." He straightened from his bow and fisted his left hand in his right. "My men were taken by surprise when they encountered you. I'm afraid they forgot the proper protocols of respect when it comes to Sith Purebloods."

There weren't many stories on how to deal with a violent Sith but as a rule of thumb, excess over-formality couldn't hurt. Besides it seemed to be confusing the spit out of her. Or at least she hadn't leapt at him shrieking and gibbering yet.

"We'll have those binders off, sergeant." Yarrow snapped his fingers briskly. One of the troopers shot him a startled look and Yarrow fixed him with a steel-eyed stare. Captain Yarrow won. The trooper started forward, blaster cautiously lowered.

He'd only gained a few steps when a sinister rattling started up. The trooper paused and nervously looked at the surgical trays and the rows of scalpels, scanners, and blood-clotters jumping and juddering in their racks.

"Um sir?"

One of the overhead lumens crackled out and a bead of sweat thickened the edge of Captain's Yarrow's collar. He fought the urge to loosen it and cleared his throat. "Backstep corporal. Minefield slow, if you please."

"Yessir."

The rattling died down. The slave scooted a little farther back in her nest of shadows.

"Ah...you'll be pleased to know we've been ordered with all speed back to Korriban...perhaps if you would allow me to remove those binders we can find you more accommodating quarters until your arrival." Yarrow tried a polite smile. "My doctor _does_ need his infirmary back."

It didn't work. The eyes narrowed and Yarrow quickly backpedaled. "But of course my lord it is whatever you feel comfortable with." He gnawed his lips in frustrated nerves. This was going nowhere. He might as well have been trying to coax a gizka out of the air ducts.

 _Actually...could it really be that simple?_

Captain Yarrow issued a quick order into his comlink. A few minutes later, a confused orderly stepped through the door carrying several silver-wrapped bricks and a trooper's canteen. He set the supplies down and exited the infirmary. Yarrow bent down and picked up one of the bricks, feeling her eyes on him the entire time.

"My lord these are rat-"

The ration pack jerked out of his fingers and sailed neatly into her cuffed hands. The Pureblood watched him like a snake as she slit the foil with a sharpened nail and stuffed half the brick into her mouth. Her teeth came down like a rancor cracking bone.

She chewed. "You keep calling me that. My lord." The Pureblood's reptilian yellow eyes flickered in the first blink he'd seen her make. "Why?"

Captain Yarrow stared at her, astounded to hear her speak. Dr. Lynk had made her sound like a raving, spitting mad-girl but her voice was low and cut like a shiv. Sharp and suspicious and husked to a whisper like someone who smoked ten death-sticks a day. _Or breathed rock-dust for years_ he realized and straightened his uniform.

"Well in a manner of speaking, it is what you are. In the Empire, to be a Pureblood Sith is to be above the rest. Even if you are somewhat erm, _reduced_ socially speaking at the present, _my lord_ is the title of address any Pureblood Sith is entitled to by virtue of their birth."

She snorted, like a Gamorrean clearing a nasal cavity and spat something out of her mouth.

"What's on Korriban?"

Captain Yarrow blinked in astonishment. She really didn't know? How long had she been a slave?

"Why...the Sith Academy, my lord. You _are_ a Sith Pureblood. The power in your veins is a rare birthright, with proper training it will be a valuable contribution for the Sith _and_ the Empire."

"Like this?"

Her hands clawed out. The flap on Yarrow's holster snapped open and his personal sidearm flashed across the room, snapping into a double-fisted grip that she pointed straight at him. The guards cursed and jerked their blasters up and Captain Yarrow's voice dropped into full parade-ground bellow.

"Hold!"

The Pureblood didn't blink at any of them. Her thumb stroked the side. She seemed to be making sure it was _off_ the safety.

Captain Yarrow breathed carefully and looked her in the eye. "Pardon my impropriety with a blaster in my face, but that is a child's trick compared to what you'll learn at the Academy."

Her eyes narrowed."What can I learn?"

Captain Yarrow quickly racked his brain, dredging up all the stories and ghastly tales he'd heard late at night in the officers' clubs. "Some have seen Sith shoot lightning from their finger-tips….or strangle their enemies from across the galaxy. I have heard some can levitate and others can implant horrors in the mind that leaves their victims clawing their own eyes out. The power in your blood grants you access to abilities the rest of the Empire can never believe, but at Korriban you will learn it. I swear it."

The Pureblood girl considered his words and her eyes lit up with a new emotion. A cold hunger that chilled Yarrow's spine to see. After a moment, the blaster barrel slowly drooped down and she held out her binder-cuffed wrists.

* * *

 _A/N: For those readers who're wondering why this story sounds suspiciously familiar, consider this an alternate version of the story I started in Korriban: First Lessons. The characters are the same and the plot is the same but let's just say mistakes were made. I realized with my first start at telling this story that I'd allowed the outline to get away from me. I looked at everything I had planned for Tali and everything I had planned for Kory and I realized this was way too much to cram into what's really supposed to be a prequel to the series I'm writing. So consider this the Canon version to the Legends of my other story. No, reverse that. Disney sets a terrible bar. This is the Legend of a Sith Inquisitor and it started a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away._


	2. Chapter 2

Tali ducked the humming energy field by a hair. The midday sun dripped sweat off her bone-spurs. Her red skin felt flushed, two degrees past combustion as she grunted and skiffed past her opponent. It wasn't going well. He was bigger, stronger, trained. This was exactly the kind of fight she'd avoided in the spice-mines. The kind that got her killed.

Her weapon was long and unwieldy, a meter and a half of dead-weight that burned her feeble muscles every time she swung. Mostly she didn't, instead dredging up every scrap of agility she had to dart around her opponent's blade.

Tali dodged another strike and swung hard. Quick as a snake, the other saber-foil slapped her weapon out of her grasp. The crowd around her watched silently. They'd come to see the Pureblood bleed. Tali could taste it in their whispered breaths. So far they were getting their credit's worth. Tali hissed out a breath and lunged for her foil anyway. _Wham!_ Impact triggered the shock field humming around the duralumin pole. Pain stitched up her gut and the Pureblood clenched down a snarl as she tried to block with her arms. The second impact sent her skidding to her knees and blood speckled the sand from her busted lip.

There was some clapping and appreciative whistles from the other acolytes and a dry growl from Overseer Rance.

"Remember acolytes, Shii-Cho is the most _basic_ form! A true Sith could master it in a week!"

Tali worked her tongue around her mouth, dredging up some moisture to coat the back of her cracked throat. Outside the Academy's freezer-chilled halls, Korriban was a wasteland that made the Pureblood realize there really could be a thing as too much heat.

"From Shii-Cho rises the precision of Makashi! The power of Djem So!" Rance's fist clenched tight. "As Acolyte Tali has repeatedly demonstrated, fancy footwork is _not_ enough. Starting positions you two! Let's see if you can at least hit him this time." Tali grimly got to her feet and collected the saber foil. Acolyte Kehel smirked and twirled his own foil. Tali ground her boot heels into that awkward spread-legged stance, squared her shoulders, tugged the heavy foil up with her burning muscles.

"Again!"

Tali darted forward warily and Kehel smoothly stalked out of his own ring like a Nexu loosed for the arena. The Pubreblood blocked two shuddering strikes and then Kehel bellowed and when she tried to block he cleaved down so hard her own saber slammed down on her skull. A spiral galaxy bloomed across her eyes. Tali slammed to the ground and spinning gravity kept her pinned to the hard-baked dirt.

Overseer Rance cursed in disgust and turned away.

The stars orbiting her eyes started to fade back to the dusty Korriban skyline. Acolyte Kehel crouched down beside her. "Everyone else got so scared when you showed up but you're pathetic aren't you? How'd a weakling like you survive?" His noxious breath raked her ear. "Or did the other slaves like having a little Sith as their schutta?"

"Acolytes! Starting _positions_."

The pebbles around her hand trembled. Kehel didn't notice. He spat on the ground and walked back to his ring. "I could do this all day Overseer!"

Tali got up. She heard Rance say something, heard the sniggered whispers in the crowd, but she didn't understand it. Right now the Pureblood was listening to the dead wind stirring the dirt, Kehel's heavy pig-breath. The hiss of grit running against her foil as she dragged it, the blood slamming in her ears.

The little black spark in her heart started to burn. Tali stabbed her feet into the dirt inside her circle, squared her hips. She didn't hear the Overseer, didn't see him signal _go_. Her feral yellow eyes were laser-locked to Kehel.

His foot lifted off the ground.

She moved.

Kehel saw her rushing towards him, abandoning any pretense of that awkward shuffling she'd been forced into with that stupid _Shii-Cho_. He understood her anger had clouded her judgement, that she'd just made herself completely defenseless.

He understood nothing.

Kehel grinned and started towards her, spinning his foil at the wrist. His saber-foil whipped out, batting aside her overhand chop then whipping across. It struck her on the rib, discharging an electric crackle, hitting hard enough to send her sprawling-

\- except this time Tali's skinny arm wrapped around the saber-foil, sliding up its length in a shower of sparks. Her arm went numb but saber-foils were meant to train not kill. Too much current passing through at once triggered auto-shutoffs. The orange field sizzled out, leaving him with just an overpriced stick and her bearing down like a pint-sized reek.

She hit him mid-stride. His front leg arced up, his back leg bent under and Kehel toppled with a curse as Tali rode him all the way down to the dirt. The screaming nerves in her arm met the anger in her heart. Pain became power.

The human's nose had a smooth, unfinished look to it. Tali slammed her skull down and the bone spurs on her forehead texturized it for him with a wet splurt of blood. Her fingers stabbed into anything she could find. Anything soft, anything that made him scream. Thick nails raked his face, fingers hooked into his eyes and pulped nostrils.

Kehel's fists slammed her sides but Tali tucked in tight and he didn't have the leverage to do much damage. He covered her snarling face with his greasy hand, trying to shove her head back, and Tali sank her teeth in, chewing for the blood vessels running under the flap of skin. Kehel screamed and ripped his hand back. Blood splattered her crimson cheek, hot, salted iron on her tongue. She lunged forward, transferring her teeth from his bleeding palm to his exposed ear.

"Acolytes!"

An invisible hand gripped Tali's body and yanked. There was a wet tearing sound and she flew back, tumbling along the ground before she could bring it to a roll. Overseer Rance lowered his hand and released his Force grip.

Kehel was on the ground, curled in a screaming ball. Red tears poured out of one weeping eye, the other hung on pink fleshy strands. Blood from his palm and his ear and his pulped nose splattered with every agonizing exhale. The dessicated ground drank it up eagerly.

Tali stood up. Her left arm was numb to the shoulder, the fingers on that arm were a mass of pins and needles and the ribs on her left side were tight fists of tractored knots. Every breath was fire. She savored it like wine she'd never tasted and wanted more.

Tali bent over Kehel's ear and whispered "That's how." Then she threw it back to him. It landed with a limp plop. Someone sounded like they might be sick but the rest of the class was dead silent. No whispers, no snickers. The only sound was Kehel's agonized keening and the wind hissing through the valley.

Sand crunched as Overseer Rance stepped forward. He bent over Kehel, evaluating the acolyte with a cold eye. Tali knew kolto would be able to save his sight, restore his ear too, if Rance thought it was worthwhile.

"Congratulations Pureblood. You achieved dun-moch over your opponent. You only sacrificed your arm and most of your chest cavity to do it."

He reached down to his belt and unclipped his lightsaber. With a sharp _vzzm_ the blood red blade sizzled in the sunlight, catching everyone's eyes.

"Pay attention acolytes!" Rance said, "What you just witnessed would get you killed in a real lightsaber fight!" He turned towards her, keeping the lightsaber low at his side, blade sizzling the sand beside his boot.

"Acolyte Tali, I know you were raised by feral Kath hounds,I know your life slaving away as lesser scum diminishes your appreciation of your heritage, but you will learn how to defeat opponents with discipline, power, and skill, or you will not learn at all." His words were dry, low, full of contempt.

Tali barred her teeth silently and scrubbed blood off with her tongue. He could try to undermine her victory all he liked. The Pureblood's counterpoint was on the ground trying to put his eye back in. Rance looked down and his expression twisted. He twitched his lightsaber and cauterized Kehel's bleeding with burning licks from his red blade. The young acolyte screamed and bucked but the Makashi master was relentless and precise.

"Count yourself lucky I'm letting you keep the eyes." The overseer's lip curled, "Acolyte Nataya, Acolyte Telo, haul this waste of meat to the Infirmary. Let Inquisitor Zyn know I leave it to his tender mercies whether he uses kolto, cybernetics or anything at all."

The other two acolytes blanched and left quickly, dragging Kehel between them. Rance shut off his lightsaber and clipped it to his belt. "This concludes our training segment for today. Dismissed."

The other acolytes stirred and started to file out. Tali felt their stares on her. Cold, calculating. Re-evaluating the odds of picking a fight. The Pureblood didn't have to convince everyone she was too much trouble to fight, she only had to convince them to let somebody else try first.

It'd worked in the spice-mines, hopefully it'd work saber-foil was still lying in the grit where she'd tossed it. Tali reached down to the grip. One shiny leather boot stamped down on the pole.

"Slave." Rance said quietly."Overseer Harkun will hear of this."

Tali stared at him. There was neither anger nor compassion in the human's face. He drew his boot back and Tali retrieved her saber-foil. The sun raked at her back as she turned around and shadowed the other acolytes returning to the shadow-drenched interior of the Academy.

* * *

The mess hall was already getting busy. The lunch hour had just begun. Falling into line behind some other acolytes, Kory collected a tray of food and went looking for a table. By habit, she looked for the farthest, darkest one, but someone had already claimed it. The Sith Pureblood raised her head and gave the approaching human a hooded yellow stare.

Kory swallowed and turned aside. She didn't need her gut feelings to scan _that_ message. She hadn't even known Pureblood Sith could be slaves until one had shown up in class, listening to the instructor like a hyper-intelligent rakghoul. She rarely talked, Kory didn't even know her name, but she kept glimpsing the Pureblood out of the corner of her eye, lurking in the shadows, watching everything with those cold, feral yellow eyes like a predator's eyeshine caught at the edge of a campfire.

Kory sat her tray down on a different table and tugged her chair in. Gerd was the first to join her. The dark haired boy had formerly cracked cortosis ore in the Imperial's slave-mines. Now his broad-shoulders cut an easy passage through the other slave-acolytes.

Her roommate came next, skirting around the edge of the hall like a mouse-droid trying to steer through stomping feet. Alif slipped into the third chair and glanced around with his ever-wary, ever-twitching eyes. Alif was even smaller than her and he had the look of the slave who'd spent most his time trying to stay out of the spotlights. He didn't cause her any trouble.

Kory dredged up a reassuring smile for him. Alif's nerves eased a little. Then a tray slammed down, splattering nerf-stew on the table. Nical dropped into the fourth seat and the short, stocky Zabrak threw a glare around the table. Kory's smile dropped, Alif started twitching again. Gerd just grunted and calmly sopped up the splatters.

No one had actually suggested the four eat together, it'd been something natural. Kory had shared a bunk with Gerd once or twice and Alif just needed some lunchmates that looked tough enough that he wouldn't seem such an easy target while he ate. Nical looked mean enough to bite a Wampa and tolerated Kory and the "skrunt" because Gerd was his roommate and because Gerd had spent a lot of years cracking cortosis ore that was harder than Nical's bones.

Three times a day the four slave-acolytes came together like nerfs locking horns against prowling manka cats. Kory didn't know if that made them friends. Seemed the closest you could get in a place as screwed up as this was allies of convenience.

"Heard the Pureblood sent another acolyte to the infirmary." Alif mentioned.

"So whose balls did she bite off this time?" Nical glowered.

The horned Zabrak had been in the running for _meanest Huttspawn_ before the Pureblood showed up. He wasn't taking third place very glanced over at the other table. Feral yellow met open blue and Kory quickly turned back to her meal with a cold shudder.

"Think she heard you." Kory muttered.

Nical snorted. "She comes after me, _I'll_ show her a headbutt."

Gerd shrugged, "You want to yank her tail go right ahead, I'm staying outside the splatter-zone."

Nical took a second glance at the Pureblood himself and rubbed his tattooed chin. "I could take her."

"She blinded and deafened Kehel in seconds. With her _teeth_." Alif repeated, "I heard she even swallowed the ear afterwards."

"Hmph."Nical turned back to shoveling food down his throat.

A basso roar behind them cut off the conversation as Slek overturned his table and lunged at a pair of red-haired human brothers. Gerd snorted."Forget the Pure, there's someone I wouldn't want to take on."

Nical looked over as the massive Houk cannonballed into one brother and took the other brother's foil-strike with an angry growl. "I would, if I can hijack one of those turbolasers outside and figure out a way to get Slek to walk in front of it. Otherwise? Not enough credits in the galaxy."

Gerd shook his head, "Don't know why Harkun would assign that new Sith to be Slek's roommate."

Nical grinned. "Ever put a Kath hound in with a Manka cat?"

Kory bit into her grain-roll to hide her grimace. Some of the slave-acolytes had taken to the concept of murdering your classmates like dianogas to stink. Kory thought the entire concept was disgusting but she'd quickly learned to at least keep her mouth shut and nod along at the appropriate times. Four years working the factory-lines on Brental hadn't prepared her for the Sith Academy. This place was cutthroat. The acolytes here could smell blood better than Firaxa sharks and the overseers had about the same amount of kindness too.

As long as there wasn't a body, no one raised eyebrows about the blood on the mats or in the drains of the 'fresher stalls. For her part, Kory couldn't remember the last time she'd taken a shower without her saber-foil.

After a sickening _crunch_ and a sharp yelp, the fight behind them ended with Slek victorious. Technically the brothers won too. They were still breathing. One of the twins looped his arms under the other's shoulders and carefully dragged his concussed brother away. No one had really paid attention after the first few punches had swung and the losers were quickly forgotten.

"I overheard some of the overseers talking. It sounds like the Trials are going to be starting soon." Alif said.

Gerd shook his head. "They keep saying that. Getting the feeling they just like making us squirm."

"Yeah they like making us squirm. Right on the end of their hooks." Nical skewered a bit of stewed meat and twisted his fork around.

"Any idea what the Trials are going to be?" Kory asked, but Alif just shook his head. Kory's stomach dropped and she rubbed the burn scar under her eye nervously.

She'd had enough Force talent to get plucked out from the factory lines, after everyone else on her line but her had gotten charbroiled when a smelter burst, but even after weeks of harsh lessons in cold chambers the most she could do was levitate a handful of pebbles, and even that left her sweating and shaking.

The combat-drills weren't as bad. Duplicating the same motion over and over again had been her job description at Brental, so she at least memorized the sequences well enough to not get called out as an example. Right now she was surviving in the middle of the herd, but everyone kept hinting the Trials were just around the corner like a shiv-cutter ready to stab.

No one _knew_ what they were actually going to be, but all the rumor-mills agreed that the Trials were going to cull the weak from the worthy. Failures didn't need to try again, or keep breathing for that matter.

Trouble was, that left Kory not knowing how to prepare or what to do. The red-haired slave couldn't help feeling like there was a noose hanging in front of her path and she couldn't stop walking forward. All Kory could do was keep studying, lift more pebbles in class, eat less dirt in saber-training and hopefully she'd be ready enough to survive the Trial.

And try to dismiss that tightening-noose sensation as just a case of nerves.

* * *

Overseer Harkun's chambers always felt too large for the single slab desk and chair that occupied it. Cold air shivered out of hidden ceiling vents and clotted the sweat on her back as Tali stared at the table. Harkun still hadn't gotten around to wiping off the bloodied smears from her last visit.

"You summoned me Overseer."

Overseer Harkun's shoulder-pauldrons creaked on his laminate armor as he leaned back in a towering chair. A stripe of facial hair dangling from his chin twitched as his lips tightened. Tali wondered if all humans with blood red hair had mad-dog blue eyes. "Have a seat, _slave._ "

Only Harkun could twist that word out with so much grinding venom. Tali had spent years playing Odd Nerf Out in the spice-mines. The Pureblood hadn't expected to be greeted with open arms when she arrived at Korriban. So far the Overseer had failed to disappoint.

She'd never seen an angrier human. Every inch of Harkun, from his too-pale skin to that hair that was the exact shade of two-hour-old blood seemed to vibrate with low-frequency rage whenever she entered the room.

Somehow Harkun always gave the impression he was a hair away from exploding and somehow he never actually did. Each word always come out clipped off. After the hiss, before the roar. It was the _hands_ you had to watch, especially when the air began to get dry and static.

Right now his hands were holding onto a datapad, so Tali took a seat in the single chair opposite the desk. It was naturally shorter.

"Congratulations slave. Your failures are undoing centuries of prestige and power in the Dark Side. Now when acolytes think of Pureblood Sith, the first one that comes to mind is the one foaming and writhing in the dirt with the other slaves like a mangy Kath hound."

"A frequent visitor to the infirmary. Regular trouncing in saber-drills. Assistant Overseer Markan says your control of the Force remains erratic. Half the time you're too feeble to twitch a pebble, half the time class is canceled after the holoscreen shatters. As for Overseer Rance - " Harkan glanced over and smirked, " - well, I see I already have another message from him."

Harkun tossed the datapad aside and pressed his fingertips together.

"You continue to disappoint the other instructors acolyte. I am _not_ disappointed. Because I was never taken in by your red skin. No, I saw you were for what you were." Harkun leaned forward and smiled slightly.

"You are a stain. A mistake, squirted out between some scum's thighs. Unfortunate to be sure," Harkun allowed, "Given how thin the Pureblood color is at the academy, but Sith are slaves to no one and you have been a slave to well, _everyone._ "

She could've left the Academy. A dead wasteland wasn't that different from a cold asteroid, and there were dozens of outposts in the valley where she could steal or forage for supplies. She'd dealt with crystal spiders, creatures invisible in the dark with heat-sucking forelimbs, she could deal with Tukata hounds and overgrown leech-grubs.

But something called to her here. Some power here, on this dead rock. Something that dared her to be more than just a rat etching out a living in the tunnels. She'd never had that feeling before. She'd do anything to steal it.

"I will learn." the Pureblood promised. Harkun snorted and stretched out his hand.

Lightning blasted out, actinic-bright and smashed Tali out of the chair. The Pureblood's teeth smashed together and her vocal cords seized too tight for a scream. Then it was over and Harkun lowered his hand.

"Do not get cocky. A rakghoul would have a better chance of learning than you, _slave_."

Tali scrubbed her tongue around her teeth and tasted iron. She wiped her mouth and found she'd bitten off the tip of her tongue. Harkun dusted some soot off his gloves.

"Your blood means you are still potentially too useful to kill on a whim. Continue to fall below the expectations of your instructors and I will have all the justification I need to scrub you away." He picked up his datapad and turned away. "Dismissed _._ "

Tali slowly hobbled to her legs and stood up. It burned like fire to keep her spine straight, but she walked to the door, then she slowly turned around. Harkun looked up and found her poison-yellow eyes fixed on him.

"Oh yes. The infamous stare." Harkun lowered his datapad and flexed his fingers. "I am not some mewling acolyte, and I do not have Rance's gentle touch. So go ahead. Explode."

The Pureblood stared at him for a long moment, then she said "I _will_ learn." and left.

Harkun leaned back with a grunt and returned to his datapad. "You will die." he replied to the empty room.


	3. Chapter 3

The room was black. Red shadows spilled up from dim heat vents at the base of the walls. Blue light glowed softly from the door panel in front of the bunk. Slek studied the bottom of the bed-frame above him. Slek could hear very well. The soft hiss of the vents trickling in air. The _skff_ of probe droids patrolling the corridor outside on their repulsorlifts. The slow, deep breaths of the Sith above his head.

He was going to kill her tonight.

She'd stopped shifting twenty minutes ago. The shallow breaths had deepened ten minutes ago. With the patience of a stalking vine-cat Slek slowly rolled up, easing ounce by ounce off the mattress so the springs didn't squeak. His bare feet touched down onto the cold metal floor. The vent hissed off. Slek paused and waited in the dark. Minutes ticked past. Membranes wicked over his glossy black-jelly eyes.

It was nothing personal.

Some of the other slave-acolytes had "allied" with him. Slek didn't mind that. He liked having some weaklings under his boots. It was a good way to keep score. His roommate hadn't tried to throw her weight around with him, but she also hadn't crawled under his boot either. She stayed alone and apart and some of the other slaves were more scared of her than him. That smacked of competition and Slek didn't like getting smacked.

He'd kept on tip-toes at first because of the Overseers. They didn't mind him beating up other slaves in broad-view but those were just slaves, this, well, she was a slave but she was also a kriffing Pure. So Slek figured murdering a Pureblood, even one they didn't care for, well it might be better to go more traditional. No witnesses. No body. Which was fair enough. Wouldn't be the first corpse he'd wrapped in a bedsheet. Not every gladiator Slek had faced had died in a pit fight.

The vents kicked back on. He resumed movement.

Slek's head rose above the edge of her bed. Good. She was fast asleep and rolled over on her side, one arm propped under her pillow to give it some support. She'd fallen asleep without even crawling under the sheets. Exhausted, even better. Slek slowly flexed his fingers and hovered them towards her neck. He'd make it quick, a fast snatch and wrench.

The Pureblood's parted lips slowly breathed out an exhale. Then her eyelids smoothly slid open. Yellow eyes gleamed in the dim light. They didn't look surprised. Didn't look much scared either.

 _Oh_. Slek thought. _Clever female._

He jerked back as an angry hornet buzz filled the room and her pillow exploded into frothy white stuffing. The buzzing noise screamed louder and hot fire sliced across his hand. Tali grabbed the edge of her sheets and yanked them after her as she leapt off her bunk. The black fabric wrapped around Slek's face like a living thing and she jerked them tight with a Force tug.

Tali's lunge carried her over the Houk's shoulder and she hit the ground in a roll. She jumped back up and spun around, transferring the vibro-knife to her other hand. Her heart was pumping and her eyes were dilated.

Only an idiot slept deeply around a Houk with anger issues. She'd been expecting something like this ever since she'd first walked through the door and seen the Houk's warty face. She'd prepared accordingly. The vibro-knife was the nicest one she'd ever stolen. One of those slick, no-frills Sith trooper ones with a ten centimeter blade, a nicely textured grip and ultrasonics that purred like a kitten.

They made nice work of his craggy skin as she launched back towards him. Tali sank it into his leg, then ripped it up his thigh. Slek's roar was music to her ears. Tali leapt up, slapping one hand to his craggy shoulder, using it to hoist the rest of her up so she could cling tight to his body-

\- and maybe that was a _mistake._

Slek rammed his back into the wall. It was like being side-swiped by a frieghter. Tali's grip loosened. Four sausage fingers squeezed her wrist and Slek swung.

The Pureblood slammed flat onto the metal floor in a crunch of blood and bone. The vibro-knife screeched and juddered in her hand as the blade was forced through the door.

 _Yes. That was a mistake._

Through the stars, Tali saw a moon-sized fist screaming towards her. She jerked her head aside as the durasteel wall dented and slashed with the vibro-knife. The oscillator had gotten misaligned, it was coughing smoke instead of purring silk.

Slek grunted and ignored the gash in favor of slamming a second fist into her gut. All the air exploded out of Tali with a gasp and the rattling knife juddered out of her grip. The Pureblood exploded into fury, raking his grip with her stubby talon-nails, whipping her neck down to sink her teeth into tough skin somewhere between leathersis and krayt scales.

Slek's third punch hit her in the chest. Tali heard a sound like a hollow gourd cracking and thought _those are my ribs._ Then the opposite wall was rushing towards her at lightspeeds.

Tali slammed to the floor and struggled to remember what she was supposed to be doing. Tali lifted her sticky face off the floor. She could hear the vibro-knife purring. Tali clawed for it, moving forward blindly. Her fingertips clenched the handle. Then Slek grabbed her feet and yanked her away. His left hand fisted her hair and hauled her head back.

Thick ropes of spit splattered her face. His heavy stink seared her nostrils like boiled fat and compost. Tali sluggishly stuck the vibro-knife into his leg. It went in all the way to the hilt.

"Stubborn _schutta!_ "

Slek backhanded her and her broken grip fell off the knife. Blood was gushing down his back and arms and legs but he didn't seem to care. A vibro-knife was the wrong choice, there was just too much bone and fat and muscle to trim. _Should've stolen an industrial saw, or a laser-cutter._ Tali thought weakly. While she was wishing for the impossible, why not Rance's lightsaber?That would've nested nicely under her pillow.

Slek grabbed her skull between his hands and started to squeeze. Iron bands tightened around her head. Five seconds from popping like a blood-tick, the black embers in Tali's gut ignited.

And the black embers simmering in her gut ignited.

Tali threw out her hands and all the anger and pain and fear that'd been building up in her exploded out in one massive surge of Dark Side power. Lightning slammed into Slek, blasting him into the wall hard enough to leave his shape dented into it. He fell to the floor, smoking and groaning.

The Dark Side power snapped off as quickly as it'd surged up. Tali dropped to the floor, panting and shaking from the exertion.

The cold metal floor felt so good against her throbbing brow, Tali wanted to lie there forever. But that little voice saying _lie down, just for a second. It's alright, catch your breath_...that voice had too much of Overseer Harkun's growl in it to trust. She'd just survived a close-quarters fight with a Houk. She needed medical attention the way a droid needed an oil-bath.

Tali dizzily tried to get up off her knees. Ropes of blood dangled from her drooling mouth, mated with the bloody mucus leaking from her tender nose. Tali tongued her lip and probed a massive split. Arteries in her forehead pulsed like thin-walled pressure-cookers, slamming blood against her battered skull to create blinding spiral galaxies

That little voice got louder. _You need rest. You just got worked over by a three hundred pound Houk. You're in no condition to go anywhere right now._

 _Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up._

Tali opened her mouth and sank a tooth into the split in her bottom lip. Blood and pain splashed out. The agony was a white lance of fire. It struck up an answering spark in her gut. Nothing like the unlimited power she'd felt in that brief flash of lightning. But enough for the Sith Pureblood to rise to her knees and find her feet.

 _Infirmary. I need the infirmary._ There was medicine there. Kolto tanks. Drugs. Assuming the Inquisitor in charge didn't just throw her out for disturbing him at this hour. Or the probe-droids didn't catch her breaking curfew. Or Slek didn't wake up and come after her to finish what he started. Hopefully he'd bleed out. Hopefully she'd fried his brain to jelly. Tali doubted it. Houks were tough bastards.

 _One problem at a time_. Tali explored walking. Her body settled for limping. She staggered into the hall, found a wall, and slumped against it. The wall held her up and the Pureblood slowly started to slide along it, oozing blood and char like a trail of slime.

Dark shadows pressed around her. The walls were made of metal. The floor was tiled stone and cold. Memory and present blurred the hall together, academy walls met spice-mine shafts.

She was twelve years old and her eyes cut through the pitch-black gloom with something more than sight as three larger slaves crept quietly towards her hidden spot. She reached out and the lights in their hands cracked and popped. She left them lost and begging in the dark and found her way back through the maze of tunnels to the slave pens in time for evening gruel.

 _Eight years old_ and three limbs pushed her under a conveyor belt's shadow as her right leg trailed bonelessly behind and other slaves jeered and threw rocks. Bored pirates watched from above on rusted scaffolding. When she stopped to rest, one put a blaster bolt past her ear to see if she was still breathing.

 _Tali blinked her eyes and tried to focus on the present_. There was...something, someplace she'd been heading to. A place with glass tubes and blue liquid. _Infirmary_. But that didn't make sense. The spice-mine didn't have an infirmary. _She tried to shake her head and found the floor rising up to hold her._ The floor was cool. It kissed her burning face. The spice-mine dark surrounded her. The slaves wouldn't find her here. The slavers wouldn't come down this deep either. She was off the beaten path. In the dark. _Safe._

Her eyes closed and the cold seeped in.

* * *

It was a bad idea to be wandering the Academy halls at night, but Kory didn't have a choice. She'd been driven out of the sanctuary of her dorm room by a baby Hutt doing belly-flops with her bladder. All that juma-juice before bed had been a bad idea. But Alif had filched a pair of them from the cantina and the last time she'd had one of the sweet fizzy drinks, she'd been _ten_ , so Kory had given in and they'd drunk all the evidence right then and there.

Nostalgia. It could get a girl killed.

So could a midnight run to the 'freshers. You had to be a cold bastard to put the nearest 'fresher three corridors away and fill the gap in-between with probe-droid patrols. The Sith were cold as space. Kory had to duck into shadowed alcoves and corners several times. By the time she got to the refreshers, that baby Hutt had hit puberty.

There was no one else in the shadowed 'fresher stalls. Kory finished up and washed her hands in a trickle of water.

She shut off the tap and listened quietly. She didn't hear anyone in the hall outside. Kory carefully stepped out. The hall was empty but something dark was stripped across the wall. Kory leaned closer in the faint light. It was blood. It hadn't been there before and she'd only been in the 'freshers for a few minutes.

Kory was suddenly acutely aware of how silent and empty the corridor was. Something broke that silence. A faint hissing, drifting from an inky patch of blackness at the far end of the hall. The lumens were dim. It could have been rags. Could have been a corpse.

 _Corpses don't hiss._ Neither did rags. Things _under_ rags could.

Kory swallowed and nervously unclipped her 'd seen a holo-show that ended this way once. Every instinct was telling her to run. She stepped closer instead. Until she knew what it was, it wasn't going behind her. And she wasn't walking backwards all the way to her room.

Kory flicked the activation stud on. The rags resolved. A slender, skeletal figure. An acolyte's tunic. A mess of tangled black hair. Blood red skin. Kory hissed out a startled breath.

 _It's that Pureblood girl._

The Sith's face was a shattered mask of black and purple bruises. One eye was swollen shut and her bony ridges were coated with blood. Some of them looked broken. Kory's eyes panned down and she saw sticky patches on the Sith's tunic and leggings where shards of bone had punched through.

 _Not beaten. Pulverized, inch by inch_.

That acute awareness came back. Of how dark the corridor was. How silent. How utterly alone the two of them were. Kory looked around nervously but no one lunged out of the shadows. Yet.

When she looked back the Sith girl was still lying there. Small. Broken. Just another slave in the wrong corner. Old instincts floated up.

Kory had dragged her share of slaves upright on Brental when the foremen had stalked the lines. Other slaves had propped her up themselves on the days her eyes were too heavy to keep open. When everyone was chained at the neck, what happened to the weakest link happened to all the links.

 _Except this isn't Brental._

Kory slowly leaned away from the Sith. They weren't slaves, they were Sith now. _She's not Alif...or Gerd, blast she's not even Nical._ This was the Pureblood. She'd rip your eyes out and spit in the sockets just for spite. Even a viper-eel looked frail and pitiable if you whipped it against a rock hard enough.

 _Just keep walking. This isn't your problem. Don't_ make _it your problem._

Kory got to her feet and slowly walked away. She reached the end of the hall and stopped to glance both ways for probe-droids. It was clear, no patrols in sight. Seconds ticked into minutes in the dark and she didn't move forward. Kory slowly thumped her head against the wall and sighed.

 _Idiot._

* * *

Movement jostled her ribs. Tali hissed at the pain. It was a reflexive hiss. Everything was just a deep-bone throb at this point. A vague figure looming over her put a hand on her shoulder. Thoughts struggled to form in her brain. She could manage single thoughts. If they sparked slowly and only used one synapse at a time. _Found. Slek. Pain._

Tali tried to fight the grip but she was too exhausted and whoever was holding her didn't shrink back from Tali's flopped hand. The grip tightened and the Pureblood was hauled up. She slammed against something softer than the wall. Warmer too. A shoulder dipped somewhere and Tali's arm slithered over a neck lacking scales or ridges. Hair tickled Tali's cheek and sweet-sour breath hissed past her ear.

 _"Sorry_."

Maybe Slek had popped a breath mint and rolled in a human's salty musk-odor after sucking some helium. Maybe her brain was swelling and this was just the hallucinations before she popped.

Tali's eyelids slowly cracked open like blast-shutters being hand-cranked. The hall was dark, the dim lumens barely spilled some blue shadows on the figure beside her. Faint lumen strips grew brighter and got darker as the walls dragged past. As they got brighter, details splashed onto the figure...red hair...pale skin, a blue eye pinched low by a melted-wax burn scar. As they got darker, the details vanished and all she heard was labored breaths and the scuff of her feet dragging on stone.

That single synapse was starting to get overloaded by too many questions. A gray fog pressed against her thoughts. Vision softened into black fuzz.

 _She was three years old and trembling hands pressed her closer to the heat._

The Pureblood closed her eyes.


End file.
